


carry on

by berrykeith



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 16:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15688920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berrykeith/pseuds/berrykeith
Summary: War fucks you up.





	carry on

The sunrise after the war is the warmest. James Griffin looks on as it happens. The sunlight chases the cold biting air of dawn out. Across and amidst debris, they duel for dominance, slipping in and out of broken concrete and shattered steel until they’re one and the same.   
  
James takes his helmet off and stands in anticipation of the sunlight on top of a destroyed building. He’s got a smile on his face. His fingers shake from the want.   
  
Aliens. Jesus. Thinking about it now, he’s got to laugh. Fifteen years ago, he thought everyone were just robots - that he’s the only sane conscious being in this planet, that all of reality is a simulation. All made for himself. A narcissist. Or someone who just couldn’t handle reality being it’s fucked up self.   
  
He’d eventually managed to realize it as simply a kid’s imagination, but the thought comes up every now and again. Especially with Keith. Keith, wow. When he disappeared from the Garrison, James pretty much forgot he ever existed. Like he was just a simulation. Like he was never real.   
  
The war... it’s got to be the most vivid reminder that everything is real after all. Real enemies are attacking. Real cities are destroyed. Real people are dead. There was no room here for philosophical musings. Aliens were real because they were here, attacking us. Belief is overwritten by presence.   
  
And Keith is real. He always has been.   
  
The well-anticipated arrives. The wind comes, it plays with James’ hair, running across the messy curls in his head. The sunlight embraces him in a comforting touch.   
  
Aliens. Jesus.   
  
He cries.   
  
James falls into his knees. His brain throbs with the vivid memories he’s experienced. He takes a hand to cover his mouth so the silent dead below won’t hear. Half of Earth is dead. People he looked up to. People he trained with. Strangers who didn’t deserve any of this. Fuck. He closes his hands into fists. He wishes this was a dream after all. A fucking simulation. He wishes to get pulled out of a simulator right the fuck now and just scolded. Beat up. He can feel his heart physically throb in pain in his chest. It’s too much. It’s too much. It’s all to fucking much. His tears burn his cheek - he can’t even remember when’s the last time he cried. Reality is too fucking— too fucking much.   
  
And it’s the sunrise after the war that casts a blinding light on that.   
  
A cool air rushes past, compelling the bald trees to look it’s way. James quickly gets up to meet it, hand on his holster, a quick analysis of the perimeter to devise a stratagem quicker than the enemy.   
  
But it was not an enemy before him, hovering in front of the ruins so the sunlight couldn’t slip in to hurt him.   
  
It was the Black Lion.   
  
He sniffs his tears away like he just got dust in his eyes. He knew whose voice would greet him behind the massive robot ship.   
  
“Get off of battle stance, cadet. I come in peace,” Keith said behind the lion.   
  
James calmly shifts his stance and puts his helmet back on to cover his face.   
  
The stay there in silence for a little while, then Keith speaks, “The war’s over, James.”   
  
“I know,” James answers.   
  
“Do you want a ride back?”   
  
“I’m okay,” James says, but the lion’s mouth has already opened to let him in.   
  
“Keith, really, I’m—“   
  
“Please. It’s the least I can do.”   
  
The black lion looks smaller on the inside. The bridge is an intricate design of alien tech way beyond James’ comprehension. Inside, the world looks like a game. It’s a screen - a big one, with numbers on the side, maps. Like the MFE, it could make one believe that all of it’s a simulation.   
  
But once you step out of the ship and realize it’s not, that’s when everything really dawns in.   
  
“Least you can do for what?” James asked, leaning on the lion’s cold surface behind Keith.   
  
“You brought me to my lion, you helped a lot,” Keith said objectively, then after a few minutes he added. “You’re a hero of this war”   
  
The statement shocks James a little. He shifts his weight to the other foot. “So are you,” he replies.   
  
There’s a silence around them. The air in the black lion is highly oxygenated, or James’s head just feels light for no reason.   
  
They take the long way home. The fly across piles of concrete, metal, and dust. The Galra are fucking ruthless. James had been doing rounds for thirteen hours now and people are still being found everywhere, injured either as collateral damage or from getting abused in the Galra work camps.   
  
“Are we, though?” Keith suddenly asks him.   
  
“What do you mean?” James asks, unable to read Keith with his back turned.   
  
“I mean,” Keith pauses. “Heroes. What does that even mean?”   
  
James shrugs. “We saved people.”   
  
“What about the people we can’t save? Those below? What are we to them?”   
  
James couldn’t answer. He takes a long time pondering about it, breathing the hyper-oxygenated air in the bridge.   
  
“We couldn’t save everybody,” he finally replies.   
  
Keith just nods.   
  
“You ever think maybe it’s all just a simulation?” James says, unsure where all these words are coming from, and why he’s telling them to Keith.   
  
“Yeah, sometimes.”   
  
James walks closer to where Keith was piloting, he looks down at the injured people and the aftermath of chaos. “But it isn’t, is it?”   
  
“No,” Keith says, stoic. “No, it isn’t.”   
  
James slumps down on the controls beside the captain’s chair. He takes his helmet off. He doesn’t think Keith will notice that he’s been crying, but the paladin takes one look at him, and the his eyes change expression.   
  
Keith lets the lion fly for them, and slumps down beside James on the bridge’s floor.   
  
It’s not until Keith removes his helmet that James see his red, puffed up eyes, the dry marks of tears on his cheeks. “You remember that meteor that killed the dinosaurs?”   
  
James nods. They’re both looking aimlessly at the surface of the black lion that’s showing the clouds they’re passing through. It’s surreal that they ever got here.   
  
“I don’t feel like a hero at all,” Keith said. “I just feel like that meteor.”   
  
James doesn’t speak, waiting for Keith to continue.   
  
After a long pause, he continues, “I feel like someone else... or something... put me here to facilitate natural selection. Not so I can save people.”   
  
James smiles at that. Keith. Keith, wow. He wasn’t this... profound, or mature, or skillful, or sensitive before. Maybe James just hasn’t noticed these traits hiding behind his thick walls. Maybe they’ve both changed for the better.   
  
“You’re...” James bites his lip, hesitating. “You’re different now, Keith.”   
  
Keith didn’t expect this, and he shifts his sight to James for a little while just to get a hint of what he was connoting.   
  
“Don’t know if you remembered but you punched me once,” James smiles.  That was a stupid moment in both their lives very long ago.   
  
Keith smiles too. “Hm, I don’t know James, I thought about punching you so much, I’m not sure which ones were real and which ones were daydreams”   
  
James chuckles. “I—I said something about your parents, and you just... well, just snapped”   
  
Keith remembers.   
  
“I—“ James looks down at the floor. “I never got to say sorry about that. I—I’m sorry, I was—“   
  
“—just a kid,” Keith interrupted. “We were both just kids then. I’m— sorry about that, too.”   
  
James nodded. He didn’t know that was a weight in his shoulder before it was lifted.   
  
They stare as the black lion soars above clouds into the blinding sun’s gaze.   
  
“So, space, huh? That’s where you went off to?”   
  
Keith chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool.”   
  
James lets Keith speak.   
  
“I—my mom and I got stuck in this abyss for two years once, but turns out it was just a few seconds in real-time. So that was... weird...”   
  
James doesn’t remember the last time he saw Keith, but he’s pretty sure he’s never seen this kind of expression on him before — a nostalgic smile. It was always just angry or unamused with him before. This one looks good on him after all.   
  
“I think it’s cool that your mom’s an alien,” James says. “Explains your superhuman abilities.”   
  
Keith turns his head to him. “You finally admitting I’m better than you?”   
  
James laughs. “Please. Give me one of these magic ships of yours and I’ll definitely beat you to a race, man”   
  
He shakes his head. “Sorry man, only half-alien dudes are allowed one.”   
  
“Well then, I guess we’ll never settle the score”   
  
“What about in those MFEs?”   
  
James smirks. “Oh, you wanna go there? I’m calling homecourt?”   
  
Keith crosses his arms at him. “Do it. I’m not scared of you, James Griffin.”   
  
James sees that same look. The Keith he knew. He’s glad to see him again. “Okay, Keith Kogane”   
  
They laugh. The sound fills the bridge. As the black lion nears the Garrison, the two watch as the sky gets replaced with the desert, and then back to the debris of the war that’s still going on in their heads.   
  
James’ smile disappears. “We’ll never have those days back again, will we?”   
  
Keith doesn’t answer and just gets up back to the pilot’s seat. He grips the controls tightly. “You’ve changed too, you know, James. You’ve grown up to be a really impressive soldier. You have my respect and trust.”   
  
James runs a hand across his hair. As they near the Garrison, his heart hammers through his chest in a nervous pace again. Back to the ruins. Back to the dead. Back to the war.   
  
He finds himself up and putting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Keith.”   
  
He’s not sure what he was out to say. Something about never changing at all. Something about still being the same scared kid back at the Garrison. Something about loving him once, and something about maybe loving him again.   
  
James plucks up the courage. He says, “Keith, can we— can we please... stay up here for a while.”   
  
Keith stops the lion’s descent.   
  
“Why?”   
  
“I—“ James doesn’t know why. “ Because... I’m—“ His chest tightens. “I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m devastated. I’m not ready to come down and— see all of it. I’m—“   
  
Keith puts a hand over James’s on his shoulder. He squeezes it like how his mom does do him.   
  
“It’s okay,” Keith says gently. “I’m here.”   
  
Keith gets up from the chair and pulls the brown-haired boy into a tight hug. He lets him cry.    
  
They stay at the helm of the black lion for twelve minutes until all of James’ tears for all the people he’s lost has been shed. Until he can stand up and be strong again.   
  
Keith waits for him to get sorted, so when they come down it doesn’t look like he was crying at all. So the other cadets who look up to him keep the pretense that he’s unhinged.   
  
“How do you do it?” James asks before they come down. “How do you deal with all of it?”   
  
“I don’t always get to deal with it,” Keith answers. “All the deaths are still balanced on my shoulders, but my team— my family— they help me carry them”   
  
When the lion’s mouth opens, James repeats what he said earlier.   
  
“You’re really different now, Keith,” he said. “But I’m still as amazed and impressed by you as I ever was.”   
  
Keith smiles at him like he never has before, and they walk back into the aftermath of the war side by side.

 

Life carries on.

**Author's Note:**

> pls blame annie for this, thanks.
> 
> hmu on twitter @bonglotor


End file.
